Federalism versus modern, secular puritans

Federalism is a code word for harboring sinful desires:

The argument would only work if white supremacy were the reductio ad absurdum of opposing globalization and federal power, an assumption that makes no sense. You'd actually expect the most partisan patriots to embrace a radical decentralism, not racism. Perhaps expecting this objection, Stern argued that decentralist rhetoric is racist itself-that the idea of states' rights "has always been used to shield local governments from criticism over discriminatory practices" (emphasis added). And the dangers of decentralization didn't stop there. "Most Americans," Stern wrote, "define their political associations from top to bottom: One is an American, a Texan, from Dallas. There has always been a countervailing tendency...to reshape alliances so that small comes first, and large last, if at all." And what's so bad about that? "When a political movement rejects the idea of common American values and says, 'Let me do it my own way,' it usually means it wants to do things that are objectionable, and yearns to do them undisturbed and unnoticed."

The idea of a common American set of values is largely a creation of public education. It's maintained by the way that each region of the United States maintains a selectively provincial view of what the United States is. Each region tends to see itself as the authentic America, and the rest either hopelessly backward or running off a values cliff at full speed. That view of the other didn't come out of nowhere, but rather it comes from the fact that in our observation of our own region, and the behavior of the others, we see a marked disparity between our values and culture. Our own founding fathers realized that while we were capable of becoming a single country, we would always be closer to a union of nations along the lines of the United Kingdom, rather than a single unified nation like France which happens to have some other nationalities annexed within its borders.

It is true that federalism is often reinforced by regions that want to do their own thing in a manner which other states may find objectionable. Undoubtedly, Californians would be largely apoplectic at the thought of South Carolina using state tax revenues to support religious education. The larger issue is, however, why the hell is it California's business what happens in South Carolina? Cheap, asinine objections like dredging up slavery and Jim Crow laws only serve to show that those making the objection are intellectual one trick ponies who hope to smear their opponents with false associations. The truth is we are all hypocrites on this issue to some extent, as witnessed by the way that secular Californians cheerfully ignored the wishes of most of the other constituent members of the Union by legalizing medical marijuana (not that I personally oppose that).

Decentralization is of course the fastest way to save the lives of controversial people like Dr. Tiller. If Kansas had had the freedom from federal autocracy to declare abortion murder and punished accordingly, he would have had to set up shop in a state that would permit him to operate. Now, his killer had a history of mental problems, and Tiller did make himself more of a target by performing abortions that even most pro-choicers consider to be, at best, ethically questionable, so it is possible that his killer would have hunted him down across state lines. However, it is worth noting that in general, "right wing extremists" like a number of militia groups tend to be focused on the local, not the national. The fastest way for the federal government to remove itself from their radar is to simply stop meddling in their state's affairs. It is unnecessary centralization, with its imperial tone and demeanor, that sets the stage for confrontation.

It has been said that Puritanism was the fear that somewhere, someone was having fun. Likewise, it can be said that modern anti-federalism (supporting a more unitary state) is the fear that somewhere, some state is successfully doing something not blessed by the other 49 states.